This week on the Apprentice the candidates were sent off to Hamburg to sell crisps by British manufacturers to the German market.

Chris Bates, who having been in the boardroom far to often for comfort decided to take his destiny into his own hands and volunteered to be team leader for Synergy.

Team Apollo however decided to go for a safe pair of hands and opted for Stella English as their team leader.

The teams were immediately split into two groups with the team leaders staying in Britain to make the crisps, while the footsloggers went off to Hamburg to do a bit of market research.

Synergy decided to opt for a German and continental flavour, with currywurst and goulash flavoured crisps. Apollo however, recognising they knew next to nothing about Germany, resolved to keep things British with chilli & beef and stilton & paprika flavoured crisps.

The idea of having British people make British products for the Germans rather than British people making German products for the Germans appeared to be the wiser one as the teams received reviews for their products from the locals.

While Apollo's crisps generally went down well, Synergy often got mixed reactions, with some saying they only knew the flavour because they were told in advance what it was. Perhaps the Germans know better about their own cuisine after all.

However it was not only Apollo's crisps which proved to have the edge. The team also managed to secure deals from under the nose of Synergy by getting to key meetings earlier or by speaking to the right people at smaller local outlets.

This failure on Synergy's part ultimately led to the team losing yet again, much to Lord Sugar's displeasure.

Chris Bates, seemed almost resigned to his fate having lost again, but still had to go through the motions of bringing two people into the boardroom, opting for Christopher Farrell and Jamie Lester.

Interestingly as the series has progressed and the weaker candidates have been eliminated the boardroom exchanges have become more civilised (perhaps reflecting the higher quality of the remaining candidates).

Even Lord Sugar is finding it harder to discover the howling errors made by the candidates, although he is also struggling to find the "spark" that he often mentions.

Lord Sugar pointed out to Chris Bates that he'd seen so much of him in the boardroom that he was getting sick of him, and Chris duly prepared for the worst.

Jamie was also challenged to find a single "gem" that he had come up with during the process. Having failed to do so he said there were "several gems" that he had displayed, although he declined to say what they were.

Lord Sugar then turned his attention to Christopher Farrell, who had not yet been in the last three, saying he was a very well liked person and worked very hard. But despite this he said that Farrell lacked the entrepreneurial "spark" and so it was the ex-marine who was fired. Chris Bates lived to fail another day.

Germany